Team:Brasil-SP/Project

     Our project consists of a biological molecular device (using Bacillus subtilis as chassis) for detection of Cystatin C, a biomarker of chronic kidney disease. The genetic circuit being assembled is based on the outstanding project of the Imperial College of London team of iGEM 2010 (special thanks to the ex-iGEMer Christopher Hirst, who helped us a lot sending some important BioBricks). Part of our mission is also to improve the characterization of the BioBricks developed on 2010 and to validate the molecular design as a generic detection system. This flexibility of detection is based on a protease cleavage of a membrane protein who triggers the genetic circuit. Since any cleavage site could be designed, virtually any protease could be used as a signal for the detection. In our case, the disease biomarker will inhibit the action of our chosen protease (Cathepsin S) and the detection will be made indirectly and negatively - i.e. by the Cathepsin lack of protease activity and absense of the system output. We are on the way to assemble all the parts and properly characterize each part of our construction on time for the Jamboree.
      To address a real world situation, we are working on the same principle and aesthetics of the well known devices for biodetection like pregnancy or HIV tests: easy-to-use microfluidic devices. The plan is to design a microchip able to store spores of the developed strains of B. subtilis and safely expose blood samples to our biodetection system, successfully containing the biomaterial and enabling a proper discard of the chip. A priori, the device output monitoring would require a fluorescence detector tool, but we also propose a naked eye output observation as a concept for future prospects.
      Since we are working on a solution for a problem directly related to ordinary people, having a public feedback about synthetic biology is very important to analyze the social impact of our work and it help us to evaluate the biosafety and bioethical issues beyond a simple risk analysis - a sociological characterization of the values of our project. Thus, as a policy and practices approach, we will try to report public opinion of Brazil on these issues using a questionnaire to evaluate our actual scenario and, in a certain way, our own project.